Defining spatial conservation priorities in the face of land-use and climate change

Creating and managing protected areas is critical to ensure the persistence of species but dynamic threats like land-use change and climate change may reduce the effectiveness of protected areas planned under a static approach. Here we defined spatial priorities for the conservation of non-flying mammals inhabiting the Cerrado Biodiversity Hotspot, Brazil, that overcome the likely impacts of land-use and climate change to this imperiled fauna. We used cutting-edge methods of species distribution models combining thousands of model projections to generate a comprehensive ensemble of forecasts that shows the likely impacts of climate change in mammal distribution. We also generate a future land-use model that indicates how the region would be impacted by habitat loss in the future. We then used our models to propose priority sites for mammal conservation minimizing species climate-forced dispersal distance as well as the mean uncertainty associated to species distribution models and climate models. At the same time, our proposal maximizes complementary species representation across the existing network of protected areas. Including land-use changes and model uncertainties in the planning process changed significantly the spatial distribution of priority sites in the region. While the inclusion of land-use models altered the spatial location of priority sites at the regional scale, the effects of climate change tended to operate at the local scale. Our solutions already include possible dispersal corridors linking current and future priority sites for mammal. conservation, as well as a formal risk analysis based on planning uncertainties. We hope to provide decision makers with conservation portfolios that could be negotiated at the decision level. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.